Horse and Cattle Handling Safety Stats and Facts

FACTS

1. Some of the most common injuries include being stepped on by large animals, being knocked down, kicked, thrown while riding, or pinned between the animal and a hard surface. Injuries also occur from bites.

2. Every year, people are hurt by cattle, mostly when cattle kick or crush them. Some get serious injuries, like broken bones, and people have been killed.

3. You are more likely to be injured:

when you don’t have the experience to assess the risks
when you don’t have the agility or ability to get out of the way
with bulls
with recently calved cows
with bad-tempered or irritable cattle
with cattle that are not handled by humans very often, e.g., run cattle
in a new environment for cattle, e.g., entering the milking shed for the first time.
handling cattle at close quarters, like in a race or a crush loading and unloading cattle for transport.
when you are tired, like during calving season when farmers work long hours with broken sleep.

4. Older farmers (over 65 years) and children are most at risk of injury.

STATS

4 to 5 people are killed in accidents involving cattle each year, with 74 fatal attacks. Most were farm workers, but a quarter (24%) of these deaths were members of the public walking on footpaths.
91% of HSE reported fatalities on the public were caused by cows with calves; only one death involved a bull.
48% of attacks were caused by (unspecified) herds, followed by single cows (22%), cows and calves (20%), heifers (7%), and one bull attack (2%). Behavioural research suggests maternal defensive aggression.
730 deaths and 150,000 disabling injuries occurred on U.S. farms. Each day, about 500 agricultural workers suffer lost-time injuries, 25 of which result in permanent impairment. Farm operators and their family members accounted for most of the injuries reported.
When looking at activities in which workers were injured, 45.7% involved livestock handling. When looking at restricted workdays by source of injury, livestock were responsible for the largest percent (34.9%)
Bulls, which account for only 2% of cattle, were responsible for 48% of the deaths from cattle, according to the U.S. Department of Labor Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries and the Surveillance of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses databases.